Medicare Beneficiaries

The nation's largest hospital organization has agreed to a $98 million settlement to resolve charges that it overbilled by admitting individuals as inpatients rather than keeping them under observation, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

A hospital substantially reduced Medicare costs and skilled nursing facility stays by providing more primary care in frail elders' homes, according to study findings published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

When you complain about bizarre government conditions or regulations, as columnists are wont to do, you usually have to assume you're just whispering into a stiff wind. But now comes word that no less than the Office of Inspector General of your Department of Health and Human Services is jumping on the bandwagon to change the hospital "observation stay" madness.